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safesdev

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"Failed to load database information" error in Business Objects XI 3.1 after ODBC driver update

We are using SAP Business Objects Enterprise (BOE) XI 3.1 on AIX 7.1 servers to host viewing and printing Crystal Reports from a legacy custom application. The reports run against a SQL Server database using ODBC. We recently upgraded SQL Server from 2008 R2 to 2012 and had some report issues with the SAP-supplied Data Direct ODBC 5.3 driver. Since BOE XI 3.1 is no longer supported, we were unable to get an updated ODBC driver from SAP. We downloaded the latest ODBC 8.0 driver from Data Direct After many attempts, we finally installed and tested it on a development BOE server and it resolved our report issues. We are now deploying the updated driver to other BOE servers, and are having intermittent installation issues.

All of the BOE servers are equivalent and we follow the same installation steps on each one. In all cases, the installation reports success. On some servers everything is fine and all the reports run without issues using the updated driver. However, with other installations, all reports fail with a "Failed to load database information" error. In these cases, we've tried restoring the server and repeating the installation, with some working and others not.

Can anyone provide some insight into the "Failed to load database information" error, and how the resolve it? I thought it might be that the ODBC.INI file can not be located, but everything I've checked on good and bad installations looks the same.

All help is much appreciated.

Craig Brosius
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Mike McCracken

Did you install both 32 and 64-bit drivers and connections?

mlmcc
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ASKER

Thanks for the suggestion.

The AIX host is 64-bit, but the BOE XI 3.1 application is 32-bit and installed the ODBC 5.3 32-bit driver. We are updating to the ODBC 8.0 32-bit driver. All of our BOE servers are equivalent and the updated 32-bit driver has worked on most of them, sometimes, however, having to repeat the driver installation. The strange part is that the installation doesn't always work and we haven't been able to resolve the "Failed to load database information" error. Our only recourse has been to repeat the installation and hope it works.
Hi!

Have you ensured that all servers have the same network connectivity, firewall settings, and database permissions?

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